Sharp players bring music to the web

By Glenn MulcasterMay 27 2003
Next

Musicians who turned to careers in the software and internet industries
during the 1990s have had to rethink their day jobs.

Michael Oliphant had what he describes as some modest hits in the 1980s with
his band, which toured as a backing group for performers such as Tina Turner,
the Seekers and Colleen Hewett. But by the mid-1990s, he says, he was entranced
by the internet and worked on a project to help golfers book tee times over the
web.

The dotcom bust two years ago, however, helped cripple the project after seed
capital had been raised to establish a working version, demonstrated at a
tournament in early 2001, using WAP phones.

Oliphant found himself running a small software company
going through liquidation, so last year he returned to music. There were many
4am finishes in his home recording studio, in the Melbourne bayside suburb of
Elwood, as he worked with a team of 10 people on a project called exploreyourvoice.com
.

A co-producer was bass player Roger McLachlan, an original Little River Band
member.

");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

Over 12 months they laid down about 30,000 sound files in Oliphant's living
room. This represents more than 15GB of music and voice recordings on the hard
drive of a Macintosh workstation and is the basis of a website that teaches
subscribers to sing, using a method designed to build confidence.

The teaching method was developed by Melbourne vocalist and singing teacher
Kate Slaney. "Most people have a secret desire to sing," she says, "but it
takes time to build up the courage to phone up a singing teacher to take it any
level."

Slaney, who also sings with a group called Vicious Soir, says a
computer-based lesson helps the novice singer to relax, be confident and feel as
though they are not being judged by a frowning teacher.

She hopes online lessons can encourage people to take their voices more
seriously, possibly to seek formal vocal instruction.

Oliphant stresses that Exploreyourvoice contains no computer-generated music,
and no tone-correcting software was used during its production. "We played and
sang everything that is used in the lessons," he says.

Meanwhile, Sydney guitarist Stephen Clarke found times tough in his software
engineering career. Two years ago he moved north to Newcastle, which has a
vibrant music scene, but he has not performed there. He has spent his time
between IT contracts improving his ChordWizard software, a computer-based
workshop for players of fretted instruments such as guitar, banjo or mandolin.

The first version was released in 1998 after more than four years of
part-time work. ChordWizard is now available as a downloadable program over the
internet, or through retail outlets.

The latest version was finished last November. Clarke added features such as
a virtualised chord system with which a player can retune an instrument on a
computer first, without having to adjust strings on a physical guitar.

Paradoxically, it is the maturity of the internet and the computing hardware
available that has helped these projects find an audience after the internet and
IT industries discarded their proponents two years ago.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission reveal that while the growth of broadband
internet connections slowed in the final three months of 2002, there are still
many more subscribers to fast internet services in Australia.

"This current project would not have been able to fly five years ago," says
Oliphant. "Plenty of households now have a fast PC with a fast internet
connection."

ExploreYourVoice.com raised private capital and has spent more than $250,000.
Yet its expectations are modest.

"There's no expectation of a massive return on investment in a short term,"
says Oliphant. "We never thought we'd be squillionaires by Tuesday week."

Clarke agrees that the maturity of technology has been timely when he was
cast out of work. "A computer is not something you just use in business any
more," he says.